Visakhapatnam Project: Creation of new type of producer-consumer relationship and common property resources through the linkage of urban-rural women’s Self help Groups (SHG’s).

Last updated: May 2007

	Name (English)		SOMNEED
	Name (Japanese)	SOMNEED SOciety for Mutual aid, Networking, Environment, Education & Development
	Established in	1993
	Registered status in Japan	Registered under the Law to promote specified non-profit activities
	Name of the Representative in India	Ms. Yasuko Hara
	Address	Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India
	Tel/Fax
	E-mail address	somneed*sify.com / info*somneed.org (Japanese & English) (When sending a mail, please change * into @.)
	URL	http://www.somneed.org http://somneed.seesaa.net/　(Blog site in Japanese only where one can see latest activities of SOMNEED. One can also see back numbers of “PCUR-LINK Newsletter” *(PDF, Japanese)
	Activity in India Since	1993
	Objectives of work in India	Rebuilding communities towards a sustainable society to safeguard environment with special care on weaker segments of the society by taking them as our partners to overcome our common issues.
	Outline of ongoing JICA Partnership Programme projects	The overall objective of the programme is to strengthen and empower communities in urban slums through women self help groups (micro credit group, herein after referred to as SHG). To achieve this objective, JICA Partnership Program is going to create a new type of producer-consumer relationship and common property resources (CPR), through the linkage of urban-rural women's SHG. The target SHGs are located in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. The expected outcomes for this 3-year project are to improve skills such as planning and management of SHGs, to build a new type of relationship between consumers and producers, and to provide an opportunity to manage common property resource such as production-distribution centre for income generation
	Field of Activity	CPR management through capacity building of SHGs
	Working area	Visakhapatnam District, Andhra Pradesh
	Name of the partner NGO	Mahila Action
	Message from the Representative in India: SOMNEED never imposes a ready-made project designed in Japan for the use NGOs in India. SOMNEED has been trying to rebuild communities towards a sustainable society by tackling common issues with local people. In 2001, SOMNEED India was registered under Trust Act and it opened its office at Visakhapatnam. It was the first case for a Japanese NGO to do so with resident Japanese staff. SOMNEED does not start any project without establishing trust and partnership with local people. With partnership building, SOMNEED proceeds to community-based issue analysis with the people before actually planning any project. Followed by the analysis, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and feedback are done by the people as well. This is what our local partners call as “SOMNEED method”. Many local community based organizations, NGOs and government agencies request SOMNEED to conduct capacity building training to learn this method.